‘Stay back!’ she said. ‘Go away!’
Neither of them moved. The bear stared at the thing in Anna’s hand. Anna stared at it too.
She had no idea what it was.
The thing was about the length of a school ruler. It looked a bit like a sword, but no part of it was made of metal. The blade was thin and creamy-white, the same colour as scar tissue, or the moon on a cloudy night. The edges looked very sharp, tapering to a point so fine and needle-like that Anna could scarcely see it in the unlit room.
The bottom of the knife (for Anna decided that it must be a knife) was wrapped in a leather coil. It felt warm and comfortable in her hand, almost like the knife had been sitting close to a fire. Holding on to it made her feel less afraid.
She watched the bear, waiting for it to move. The small black eyes were fixed on the dagger-point. They weren’t blinking. For the first time the creature looked uncertain, unsure of how to proceed.
And then the bear bowed. It sat down on its rump and leant forward, placing its snout on the floor at Anna’s feet. It made a small growling noise that sounded almost friendly.
All was quiet in the room. The tip of the knife wobbled in the air. Anna tried to stop her arm from trembling. For reasons she didn’t understand, the fight was over. She reached out with her free hand and rubbed the bear between the ears. It purred a little louder, sniffing at her skin as she ran her fingers through its brown fur.
Anna decided it would be all right to cry. Tears slid down her face as she sat in the bedroom where Max had been stolen, patting the nose of the bear that had tried to devour her. She thought about the Professor, away with his books, unaware that the children were in such terrible danger. She thought about home.
When she had finished crying she stood up. The bear looked at her enquiringly.
‘You stay here,’ she said. ‘Or leave. I don’t mind. But I’m leaving to go and rescue my brother.’
She pointed the knife at Max’s bed. The bear climbed atop the mattress and curled up with its head on its front paws. It gave her one final stare, then closed its eyes.
‘Um. Good. Thank you,’ said Anna.
As she left the room, the bear began to snore.
Out in the hallway, Anna walked directly to Mrs Dalca’s room. The door was locked. Anna raised her fist and knocked on the door. She knocked again and again and again, tapping out a steady rhythm with her knuckles. Eventually she heard movement on the other side of the door, and then a voice spoke to her through the keyhole.
‘Ce vrei?’ It was Mrs Dalca’s voice, croakier than ever after being woken. ‘Who is that? What do you want?’
‘It’s Anna,’ said Anna. ‘I want my book back.’
‘Go away, wicked child,’ said the voice. ‘Go back to sleep.’
‘I can’t sleep,’ said Anna. ‘There’s a bear in my room, and I have to go and fight a vampire. So please give me my book. If you do, I’ll stop knocking.’
There was no reply. Anna thought she could hear muttering, but it was too soft to make out the words. She lifted her hand, ready to give the door a particularly loud knock.
Something moved in the shadows at the end of the hall. Anna spun around quickly, the knife held ready. The moving thing paused, hidden in the darkness. And then:
‘Anna?’ said a small voice. Isabella stepped into the hallway, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’
Anna lowered the knife. She looked closely at the other girl. Could she be trusted?
‘I want to see your grandmother,’ she said. ‘She took something from me, and now I need it back.’
Isabella frowned. ‘Granny Dalca doesn’t leave her room at night. She always keeps her door locked from dusk until dawn. She says it’s safer that way.’
‘Isabella!’ said the voice from the bedroom. ‘Du-te înapoi la culcare!’
‘What did she say?’ asked Anna.
‘She says to go back to sleep. She doesn’t like me walking around in the inn after bedtime.’ Isabella looked curiously at the knife in Anna’s hand. ‘What’s that?’
Anna gritted her teeth in frustration. ‘I need my book,’ she said. ‘Unless you can tell me how to defeat a vampire. Defeat a strigoi. Because one of them has taken Max, and I really don’t think I can wait much longer.’
She said it as seriously as she could. To her surprise, Isabella just smiled.
‘Strigoi aren’t real,’ she said. ‘They’re just a story that adults tell to scare children. Granny always says that if I don’t eat my soup, the old count on the hill will come and carry me off. That’s why she puts in so much garlic – to keep the vampires away. But really it’s because she likes the flavour.’
Garlic – to keep the vampires away. It was as if the line had been taken straight from Anna’s book of fairy tales. And with it came a memory: Max at lunchtime, grinning cheekily as he poured his soup onto the purple flowers.
‘Max didn’t eat any garlic,’ gasped Anna. ‘That’s why the vampire could take him. We need to get him some soup!’
Isabella smiled again. ‘I think you might have had a bad dream,’ she said. ‘Let’s go back to your room. I’m sure Max is fine.’
‘He isn’t,’ said Anna.
But Isabella was already walking down the hallway to Anna’s bedroom.
‘Be careful,’ said Anna. ‘There’s a bear in there.’
Isabella opened the door. She stood perfectly still for five seconds, staring into the bedroom. Her face went very white. Then she leant forward and shut the door.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said. ‘I think we might actually be in very big trouble.’
7
MYTHS AND MAPS
Isabella’s bedroom was behind the kitchen. It was the closest room to the fireplace, and was therefore much warmer than anywhere else in the inn. The walls were covered in drawings of trees and flowers, almost as if the forest had sneaked in through the window and taken root.
Isabella walked over to her closet and pulled out two rain jackets.
‘Here,’ she said, passing one of the coats to Anna. ‘We’ll definitely need these.’
The rain jacket was black, and the inside was lined with soft fur. Anna thought it would provide good camouflage in the darkness outside.
Isabella reached into the furthest corner of the cupboard and dragged out an old brown knapsack. The bottom of the bag was held together with several mismatched patches, and the shoulder straps looked as if they were almost worn through. Isabella opened the top of the knapsack and pulled out a metal thermos.
‘This is my adventure kit,’ she said. ‘I take it out with me when I go tree climbing. It’s full of things that might help us.’
There seemed to be an unspoken agreement that Isabella would help Anna find Max. Anna looked inside the knapsack. She could see a rope and a pocket knife and a rolled-up bandage, as well as a white paper sketchbook and a bundle of pencils. She found herself wishing that she had an adventure kit as good as this one.
‘We could add your sword,’ said Isabella. ‘I could wrap it in a towel.’
Clearly Isabella thought Anna had brought the knife with her to the inn. Anna decided to tell her the true story.
‘It’s not really mine,’ she said. ‘I found it in the bedroom, hidden underneath the floor.’ She placed the white knife on the edge of Isabella’s bed. Her hand immediately felt colder.
Isabella looked at the blade curiously. She extended a finger towards it, gently touching the edge of the knife. She gasped. A cut had instantly appeared on her skin, deep enough that a drop of blood was already collecting on her fingertip. She quickly stuck her finger in her mouth to suck it away.
‘I barely touched it!’ she said.
Anna stared in amazement at the little dagger. ‘No wonder the bear was so afraid of me,’ she said. Isabella’s room was well lit, but the tip of the knife remained difficult to see.
‘It kind of looks like a tooth,’ said Isabella. ‘Do you think
it has something to do with the vampire?’
‘Yes,’ said Anna. ‘But I don’t know what. Before we leave, I’ve got a lot of questions to ask you.’
Isabella nodded. ‘You want to know everything I can remember about the strigoi.’
The two girls walked back into the kitchen, where the brass cooking pot was still hanging above the fire. Isabella emptied the water from the metal thermos into the sink. She picked up a ladle and began scooping the warm soup-stew into the thermos. The kitchen was soon filled with the smell of garlic.
‘There is no village near our inn,’ began Isabella. ‘So there are very few people who live out here. Granny says they live in houses that are scattered through the woods, hidden from the rest of the world.
‘But even though our community is very small, it still used to have a count. He lived high on the mountainside in his fortress, and it was his job to look after us and protect us.’
Anna knew that a count was similar to a lord or lady. They were usually members of old families who had lived in the same place for hundreds of years, passing on the title from one generation to the next.
‘But when Granny was young, the count died,’ continued Isabella. She screwed the cap back onto the thermos and pushed it into the adventure kit. ‘And he didn’t have any children. And that’s all true so far, I think. I always thought the next part was just a story.’
She cast a dark look back towards Anna’s bedroom. Anna knew what she was thinking. With Max missing and a bear sleeping in his place, even the strangest stories now sounded quite plausible. Isabella took a deep breath.
‘The people in the area all came out of their houses in the woods and had a meeting,’ she said. ‘And someone said that the count had been cursed, and that after he was buried he would come back and haunt everyone who lived in the forest. There was only one way to make sure he didn’t become a strigoi.’
‘What? What was it?’ asked Anna urgently.
Isabella picked up a log from the small woodpile and threw it onto the fire.
‘They burned down his castle,’ she said simply. ‘They destroyed everything that the count owned, so that there was no reason for him to want to leave his grave. So now the fort is just a ruin at the top of the mountain, and we no longer have a count.’
‘But it didn’t work,’ said Anna slowly. ‘Mrs Dalca knew that it didn’t. She still stays inside at night, and she feeds you garlic every day. What else does she do?’
Isabella thought about it. ‘She calls storms like this strigoi furtună. I thought she just meant the sound of the wind.’ She saw the look of confusion on Anna’s face. ‘In Romanian, strigoi doesn’t just mean vampire. It also means the noise you hear when somebody screams.’
Scream storms. Vampire storms. Anna glanced out the main window. The weather had been relentlessly horrible ever since they had arrived on the mountainside – almost unbelievably so. Now it seemed as if they might know why.
‘So vampires can control the weather,’ she said. ‘That’s great news. Anything else?’
Isabella shook her head. ‘I think that’s everything.’
Anna remembered the bear sleeping in her room. ‘I bet they can control animals as well. Mrs Dalca must not know about that one.’
‘I guess not,’ said Isabella.
Anna considered everything that Isabella had told her. ‘So if the vampire is the old count, it probably still lives in the burnt castle. That’s where it’s taking Max. Do you know how to get there?’
‘I’ve never been that far up the mountain,’ said Isabella. ‘But I can show it to you on a map.’
She ran back to her bedroom. Anna sat alone in the kitchen. The hopelessness of the situation was starting to nibble away at her courage. The vampire was a powerful monster, lurking in a fortress in the midst of a magical storm. If fire hadn’t been enough to stop the vampire rising, what could two children do to defeat it? And then there was the most chilling thought of all: what if they went all the way to the castle, only for the vampire to capture them as well?
‘Here you go,’ said Isabella, reappearing at the doorway. ‘I brought your knife.’
Anna tried to look her bravest. She took the knife from Isabella, squeezing the ever-warm handle in her palm. Suddenly she felt brave.
Isabella unrolled the map, holding the edges against the floor.
‘This is where we are,’ she said. It was a very old map, covered in a mixture of printed text and small, neat handwriting. Most of the map was occupied by a great mountain range, upon which was printed the word CARPATHIANS. Isabella was pointing to a hand-inked square just beyond the boundary of the mountains, marked with the words WILD THYME INN.
But Anna wasn’t looking at the inn. She had seen a separate note, scrawled in the centre of the vast woodland area: LIBRARY. The library was many miles away from the inn – many miles away from anything at all. It seemed that the Professor was even further away than she had thought.
Isabella was busy tracing her finger along the map, following a line so thin and faded that it must have been drawn on with pencil. Her fingertip crossed over a river and stopped at the top of a high hill, tapping importantly.
‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘That’s the castle. It’s got the heraldry and everything.’
A marker in the shape of a shield had been printed at the hill’s peak. Anna tore her eyes away from the faraway library to look at it.
She gasped. The shield was emblazoned with a tiny bird, its wings spread out on either side. In its talons was the crescent moon, stolen from the night, or even from a brave girl’s cheek.
Now Anna had all the puzzle pieces that she needed. She froze, her mouth open, mentally connecting all of the dark and dangerous dots.
‘That symbol …’ she said. Isabella looked at her curiously. Anna gathered her thoughts.
‘The people living in the forest had to burn everything the count owned to stop him from becoming a vampire,’ she said quickly. ‘But he turned into one anyway. So they must have missed something. Something the count owned must have survived the fire.’
Isabella shrugged. ‘I guess so. But it could be anything.’
Anna leapt to her feet. ‘There was a banner in my bedroom with an eagle on it, exactly the same as that one. It must be from the castle. If we burn it, the count will stop being a vampire! We can end this whole thing now!’
She didn’t wait for a reply. Anna sprinted down the hallway, the white knife swinging in her hand. For the first time since they had arrived at the inn she felt triumphant. The mystery was solved. There was nothing the vampire could do to stop them.
Anna threw open her bedroom door, ignoring the bear on the bed, staring expectantly at the floor where the eagle had been spread.
The banner was gone.
8
A SNAKE IN THE GRASS
Anna pulled on a spare pair of gumboots as Isabella fastened her coat. They found a pair of dusty torches in the storeroom, and filled their knapsack with spare batteries from the clock in the kitchen. They each took two cloves of garlic from the pantry, placing one into each of their pockets.
After that, their preparations were complete. The two girls held hands as they opened the front door and stepped out into the storm.
Anna had braced herself for the cold, but still she gasped as the full force of the rain swept against her face. She pulled her hood down low, staring at the ground as Isabella led the way around the side of the inn. After only a few steps the building behind them could no longer be seen. Anna kept her eyes on the path, which was little more than a rabbit scratch amid the long grass of the field.
Soon they had reached the outskirts of the forest, and now Anna could see no path at all. Tree branches whipped above them. The leaves were rustling so loudly that they might have been speaking, whispering secret words from bough to bough. It was the kind of forest that could swallow a child, easily luring them down false tracks and forgotten trails.
‘Are you sure you know w
here we’re going?’ said Anna.
‘Not really,’ said Isabella.
Anna took a deep breath. The girls stepped towards the trees, and then between the trees, and then they were in the forest, alone.
The path (if it could be called a path) was slick with mud and puddles. Hundreds of tiny streams were trickling down the slope, running around tree roots and fallen branches, weaving through the undergrowth. Every so often one of the girls would slip, pulling at the hand of the other, and then they would both have to wobble and wave their arms to stop themselves from tumbling back to the bottom of the hill.
They had been trudging for half an hour when Isabella stopped suddenly. Anna looked up. She could only shine her torch on one thing at a time – the nearest tree, the nearest bush – but with every sweep she saw hints of the countless trunks and branches hidden in the shadows. The tree that stood before them now was a snaking mass of wooden arms, each one bristling up into the forest canopy. Every branch was coated with shaggy green moss, growing wild over the grey bark. Being near the tree made Anna uncomfortable. It looked like it had been the very first tree to grow on the mountainside – the original count of the forest.
‘Let’s keep going,’ she said.
But Isabella was biting her lip. She pointed to the ground.
‘Look,’ she said.
Anna looked closely, shining her torch ahead. Her eyes eventually found the path – except now there were two paths. The track they were following split at the base of the great tree, branching off around the trunk in two separate directions. Where they led could not be seen.
‘I don’t know which way to go,’ said Isabella. ‘This wasn’t on the map.’
Anna didn’t know either. She wanted to keep moving as quickly as possible, partly because she had just heard a gentle rustling sound coming from the bushes behind them. It was not a noise that she wanted to investigate.
‘The vampire must have come this way,’ she said. ‘Maybe it left footprints.’
‘Good thinking,’ said Isabella. ‘You check the left side, I’ll check the right.’
The Vampire Knife Page 4
